


Proven

by Redbyrd



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s05e13 Proving Ground, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-18
Updated: 2004-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28564668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redbyrd/pseuds/Redbyrd
Summary: At the end of Proving Ground, Haley said, "You should have seen what they put me through."
Kudos: 4





	Proven

DISCLAIMER: The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.  
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Lieutenant Tom Elliott received the round of handshakes and congratulations from the SGC personnel who had come down from the control room feeling sweaty and a little shaken. He was still shocked at the test within a test. It had been so completely convincing. He'd felt a little unvoiced tickle of suspicion that the first scenario was a setup when he'd shot the Colonel during the test, and he'd been feeling a tad superior about it until the fake emergency and Hailey's 'injury'. He looked at his three teammates. "So what were yours like? Satterfield and Grogan grinned. "Not as exciting as yours," they replied. "You and Hailey got the big guns."

Tom looked at Hailey. "Yeah, you said yours was pretty tough. What happened?"

Hailey laughed. "I really ought to insist on beer for this."

He didn't think it would take a lot of encouragement to get her to tell. "Aw, c'mon."

She leaned on the wall by the door watching the crowd of technicians that were starting to disperse. "SG-1 didn't do mine. I think they figured that I might have studied their missions too carefully, 'cause I'd met them. So it was SG-2 that ran my test. They asked me to report in to meet with SG-1. But when I got there, they told me that they had been called offworld unexpectedly and no one had thought to let me know. Just as the general's aide was telling me that we'd have to reschedule, the offworld activation alarm went off.

"We were outside the control room, and I couldn't resist stepping inside to see what was going on. A man came through and said he was a Tok'ra. He said that he had been spying on a Goa'uld world, and we had the chance to get a really nifty piece of alien tech, but he did not have the skill to dismantle it, and he needed Major Carter's help. The catch was that the Goa'uld were on their way, and we had to go now to get a chance at it.

"General Hammond told him that she was offworld, and said he'd send another technical specialist. He started running through them, but they were all either offworld, in the infirmary or off-base and not able to be easily recalled. The Tok'ra said they had to leave right away or lose their shot. Of course I jumped in then and told him that I could do it. He gave me a really dubious look and floundered around some more, but they concluded that I was the only option. I should have found that suspicious," she looked a little rueful. "But I was so excited to have the chance to go through the gate, I didn't think about it too hard.

"They geared me up, and gave me this whole song and dance about how I wasn't yet cleared for gate travel, and I was to do nothing, not even breathe unless Major Ferretti said I could.

"We went through the gate." Tom gathered from the generally envious glances that hers had been the only test that had actually involved going offworld. "The world was pretty ordinary. Trees, dirt. The so-called Tok'ra told us that that we were headed for a temple a couple of miles from the gate. The first thing we knew that there was anyone else there is when we walked into the ambush. There was a volley of shots from staff weapons and zat blasts. The Tok'ra, Thompson and Verrazano were all hit by staff blasts. I don't know how they did that- it certainly looked real. They had these smoking holes in their chests, that looked like raw meat. You could smell burning flesh in the air.

"We shot several Jaffa, saw them fall. But then Major Ferretti, Chavez and I were zatted. The Jaffa disarmed us and hauled us to the temple. It was evident that the Goa'uld had beaten us to the site. The Goa'uld had us hauled before him and we were forced to kneel. Major Ferretti refused and they drove him to his knees. The Goa'uld had all our stuff. He picked up the GDO and told us that he wanted the codes. Ferretti refused and one of the Jaffa hit him with a pain stick." She shivered. "The Major is a heck of an actor. I've never heard anyone scream like that. And it looked exactly the way the files said, light shining from the face." She swallowed.

"After a few minutes, they took Chavez and I and dumped us into a dungeon. Left us there for hours. We searched all over the cell, but there was no way out. So then we talked contingency plans for what we should do if we got a chance. Chavez is quite an actor himself." She looked a little chagrined. "He never slipped out of character even once. I was completely taken in.

"Finally, they took us out of the cell. Major Ferretti looked ghastly. He was covered in blood. When they hit him with the stick, he made these croaking noises like he had screamed his voice hoarse. The Goa'uld told us that he while Ferretti had not broken, it was not going to be necessary to break him. A pair of guys dressed as Goa'uld priests came in, carrying a symbiote. That looked real, too." Hailey shivered again.

"The Goa'uld looked at the two of us, and said that he wouldn't put the snake in Ferretti, he was too damaged and besides, he wasn't pretty enough. Did one of us want to volunteer? That was when Chavez nudged me. I already knew what he was thinking, from the things we had talked about earlier in the cell. If one of us was Goa'ulded, there would be nothing to stop them from breaching the iris. We didn't see any way to stop them from putting a snake in one of us. But if we could get to the GDOs... The Jaffa next to Chavez had a zat. Grab that, destroy the GDOs, and it might take the Goa'uld long enough to get one that the SGC would have changed our codes.

"The Goa'uld held up the symbiote in a highly dramatic fashion. Chavez went for the zat. The Jaffa mostly moved to protect the Goa'uld and the symbiote. Chavez got the zat, took out the Jaffa on his side. I threw myself at the guy on my side, but he was huge, like a wall and he basically just swatted me. I fell on my ass. But it did keep him busy for a second, and Chavez shot the pile of equipment the first time. The Jaffa in front of me was levelling his staff at Chavez' back as he shot the GDOs for the second time. It might have been enough, but we weren't sure how fast they could repair them if they weren't completely disintegrated. The Jaffa powered the staff weapon...." Hailey was staring at the floor.

"So what did you do?" Elliott prompted.

She shrugged. "I jumped on the staff weapon. It was the only thing I could think of to buy the extra second or two. I heard the zat going off behind me- so I knew we'd won. And then it all went black. The staff weapon was an intar, of course. When I woke up, they were all standing around ready to congratulate me."

Tom shook his head. "I wonder why they did them differently."

Hailey shrugged. "I expect they were targeting our weakest areas. You did fine in the heat, but they wanted to know that you would take prompt action when you had the option to stop and think about it. I was fine when I had time to think, so they set up a scenario where I only had a split second to do the right thing."

Tom winced a little. Hailey was always blunt, it would have been more annoying than it was if she wasn't as uncompromisingly critical of her own performance as everyone elses'. "How do they dream these things up, anyway?" he asked.

He heard a polite cough off to the side. They all turned in startlement. "Major Ferretti." Hailey was jumping up, straightening to attention and moving to salute.

"As you were." The major grinned at them. "Couldn't resist hearing how it looked from the gallery. I always had a flair for drama." He turned to Elliott. "And as for how we dream them up- many of them borrow elements from actual missions. The nanites were taken from one of SG-1's early missions and the foothold setup was reminiscent of the actual attempted invasion we fended off. I'm sure you've read about it." He nodded to Hailey. "The ending condition of Hailey's test was actually based on an incident from the first Abydos mission."

Elliott remembered with a jolt that Ferretti had been on that first mission, the only remaining survivor besides Colonel O'Neill and Dr. Jackson. "I don't remember reading about that one, sir."

Ferretti laughed. "Well, that was a year before the SGC was even started. The mission report was a little sketchy." He turned half around. "Hey, Daniel!"

Dr. Jackson and Colonel O'Neill turned from where they were talking with a couple of other officers Elliott didn't recognize and headed their way. Jackson had somehow managed to acquire a cup of coffee between the control room and the gate room. "Hey, Ferretti," the colonel said.

Ferretti nodded to the four newest members of the SGC. "They were just asking about the scenario we used for Hailey's test."

"Ah." Colonel O'Neill's face went rather still.

Jackson looked puzzled. "Oh? Where did that one come from?"

Ferretti and O'Neill both gave him incredulous looks. He blinked at them. "What?"

O'Neill said softly. "Abydos, Daniel? You, me, Ra?"

Light dawned. "Oh. That one."

Hailey was looking at them both a little uncertainly. "Do you mind if I ask what happened the first time?"

O'Neill shrugged. "They captured our whole team. Daniel and I were brought before Ra. I tackled the Jaffa, got a staff weapon. But there was another one behind me and Daniel.." he glanced at his teammate and fell silent.

Jackson grimaced and drank some of his coffee. "Did pretty much what you did, Lieutenant. Jumped in front of the staff weapon."

Elliott looked from one to the other, trying to picture it, wondering how they'd gotten away. "What happened then?"

Jackson smiled a little wryly. "What you'd expect. I died."

Ferretti looked at his and O'Neill's expressions and hastily picked up the narrative. "Fortunately, Ra had a sarcophagus and Daniel was the only one who spoke the language. So Ra brought him back to finish questioning him, Daniel saved our butts, and we all got the heck out of Dodge."

"Excuse me." O'Neill turned and headed purposefully toward the door with the attitude of a man who has wasted enough time and needed to get back to work. Or possibly had urgent business in the men's room.

Ferretti winced. "Ah, I think I just put my foot in it."

Jackson gave him an apologetic look. "That one's never going to make his top ten favorite mission memories, Lou." He looked at the puzzled lieutenants. "The first Abydos mission was generally counted successful since we defeated Ra. What people seem to forget is half that first team didn't come back. Porro, Freeman and Brown all died. And so did I, however briefly." He sighed. "For your future reference, getting yourself killed on a mission tends to really annoy your team leader, even if it doesn't stick. I'd avoid it, if at all possible."

Ferretti nodded. "What he said." He clapped a hand to Jackson's shoulder and said, "Really, we probably ought to update that mission report. We were deliberately a little vague on the details at the time."

"Don't look at me." Jackson said. "I wasn't there for that part."

The four lieutenants watched in puzzlement at the enigmatic exchange of glances between the two older men before they congratulated the younger officers again and turned away.

Satterfield was watching them with fascination. "I wonder what that was all about?"

Hailey grinned. "I'm going to check and see if they do update that mission report, maybe we can find out."

The nagging resentment he had felt since failing the first test melted away as Elliott said slowly. "You know, there was a point during the testing when I wondered about some of the people who've been here a while. I mean, a lot of them have been here since before they started doing these kinds of training scenarios, and I wondered how they would have done in the same situations that we were facing. "

Hailey looked at him in surprise. "The tests were just a pale imitation of the kind of thing the people here have already faced for real."

Elliott remembered Hailey's description of the fake staff weapon wounds and pictured Jackson lying on the floor with a smoking hole in his chest. The civilian archeologist was one of the people he had most wondered about. He looked into his punch, a bit abashed. "I can see that now. I'm glad they pushed us so hard. Even having been through it once, I still wonder how I'll react when the scenario is real."

The other three regarded him soberly. Hailey broke the silence. "Enough gloom. We passed, we're in. Whatever happens, it's going to be a hell of an adventure. And we shouldn't be celebrating it on base. This calls for beer."

The others laughed and followed her as she led the way toward the elevator.


End file.
